Day 297

Worked hard and successfully on a pull-down menu program in Pascal - rather impressed with myself.

Read The Rise & Fall of The Third Reich - lots of diaries in that. Be interesting if my diaries ever were historically important, but I reckon the best I can hope for is Kilvert-style slice-of-life status. Mind you, I'll keep my diaries well away from any future spouse - his wife ripped out all the pages she didn't like after he died.

Day 296

Got a lift into town, went to the library and got a book on millennium prophecies and a thoughtful one on programming.

Day 295

In the afternoon adapted a climate classification program from that old BASIC book to C.

Day 294

Went to the Workshop in the morning. Sainsbury's lager prices low at the moment - £1.72 for 4, £4.99 for 12.

Day 293

Finalised the expression evaluator. Went into town with M and discussed C. Came back, discussed C some more. Back at my parents' I successfully created a test C library and worked hard on a program to use the QuickC fonts.

Got to go to the bloody Workshop tomorrow - hope it doesn't rain.

Day 292

Worked on the expression evaluator. M drove me to the recycling place: got £3.60 for 9kg of cans. Stopped at Sainsbury's on the way back, got 6 cans of lager - sort of perpetual motion. Back to M's for tea and Neighbours.

Later more EE - with the aid of working out the algorithm on bits of paper in piles representing stacks, corrected the latest problem. Still some unary minus/bracket issues to tackle - think I've got the solution.

Day 291

Worked on the C expression evaluator all day. Went round to M's and borrowed her QuickC book so I could understand how to do global variables.

Day 290

Wrote a QBASIC expression evaluator, using the operator stack principle. Then tried converting it into C with some success. Requires more work. Luckily QBASIC converts easily into C.

Day 289

Did a bit more C-ing on the inserting noughts into strings front.

Britain and the Red Cross are onto the Israelis over those Palestinians stuck in no-man's-land. About time too.

Day 288

Programmed. Government facing massive criticism over BR privatisation. I'd have all Tories exiled. Only Edward Heath would be spared. Shows how bad things've become when he is the acceptable face of capitalism. (If it's got one).

Burglars nick your telly, video and power tools
But only Tory bastards steal your hospitals and schools.

President Clinton makes a good start by taking steps to liberalise abortion on the 20th anniversary of its legalisation. He said their goal was an America in which abortion was safe, legal and rare, which is just what I've always believed.

Day 287

Went to the Workshop, had a 3-month review (after 5 months). Jobless up to 2,983,000 today.

M invited herself round - she was very impressed with my p-code compiler. Advised her to stick with her MSc. course - as I told her, it's not as if she's got anything else to do.

Day 286

Continued with the p-code compiler - produced executable .COM files. (First printing an asterisk, then bits of the character set). Felt proud.

Watched Bill Clinton being inaugurated as President of the USA - this is the final end of the Thatcher/Reagan/Bush era. Only Major to go. I hope President Clinton does well. I see Bob Dylan was invited to one of the inaugural balls - encouraging. Let's hope Bill remembers who the Tories supported in the American election.

Day 285

To the library, got a thorough history of British Fascism out. More p-code work all day.

Anti-Serb reporting of Yugoslavia continues. Essentially the Croats massacred Serbs during WW2 and were Nazi supporters, whereas the Serbs weren't.

Government backs down somewhat on privatising BR - now going for private monopoly. Hypocrisy or what? And look at the size of their budget deficit! And they say Labour can't manage the economy

On the 6-o'clock news saw Bill Clinton kneeling down at the shrine to John F. Kennedy, the man who inspired him to go into politics. Wonder what he was thinking? An inspiring sight.

Day 284

Beautiful cold fresh sunny morning. Went round to my parents' and worked on my P-code compiler. Complete success. Now must try making it produce machine code rather than mnemonics. Can either do it by DEBUG scripts or direct assembly (the latter feasible because relatively few different m/c instructions are used).

Read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. More attacks on Iraq by America - seems like Bush has succumbed to vindictiveness with only tomorrow left of his presidency.

Day 283

Got the paper, also got the People which printed that alleged phone conversation between Prince Charles and that Camilla Parker-Bowles woman. Is it a plot by the Tories and MI5 to get rid of another 'Something must be done' Prince of Wales?

Programmed in the afternoon. Parents came back about 3pm while I was there, had tea with them.

Day 282

Yesterday my parents said I could have my computer set up in Carl's room while he's away, and I could go round there to work on it, to make a change from this place. So today I went round and moved my computer in.

Day 281

Programmed in the morning. The woman at Sainsbury's only charged me for 4 bottles of cider when I'd bought 8, so £1.72 General Rebate there.

Christine Mallett, who I met when I was five, rang about 5.30 wanting to know if I wanted to come out with her and S. Did so: had a very good evening talking about men and sex.

Day 280

To the Workshop: an admonitory notice about time-sheets and an encounter with a woman telling me to put my sheet in a box I could not find produced a mood of depression.

Went round to M's in the afternoon, borrowed her Fortran manual.

Having to budget for the end of the Workshop money on March 3rd.

Day 279

Did a bit of programming, went into town with Carl to get some darts.

Had a peculiar dream last night about a girl who tried to beg money off me - I said I was on the dole - she said 'Why are you out [drinking] then?' What can it mean?

Day 278

Went into town with M for Fortran books from the library. Discussed various things, including Desmond's, which M mentioned after we passed a black bloke in Old Street. Also she told me several interesting things about the water industry, including that it wasn't nationalised until the early 70's, which I never knew.

When I got home experimented with Fortran.

Day 277

Massive gusts of wind and rain early on. Luckily by 8 am the rain had stopped and I walked to the tech, arrived late by their clocks.

Her: What happened to you this morning?
Me: Nothing.
Her: Why are you late then?
Me: Oh, never mind, it's the last time anyway.
Her: What do you mean?
Me: I'm not coming any more. I'm not happy with this placement.
Her: Why not?
Me: It's very boring.

No more was said!

The Sun came out on the way home. M came round in the afternoon and we discussed C, FORTRAN and her PGCE application.

In the evening finished the game I was writing yesterday.

Day 276

Programmed a game based on an old advert for a BBC micro game. Read about QBasic in the book I got yesterday.

Day 275

Programmed. Got a QBasic book from the library. M rang with a DEBUG problem which I solved. Quite a good day really: nice weather - heavy clouds, sunbreaks, rain and Venus observed about 4pm.

Day 274

The woman from the placement rang to check I would be doing Monday morning. She's got a surprise coming! Rode my bike to the Workshop: handed in the timesheets, told the green suit bloke I wanted a new placement. Back just before noon.

Day 273

Programmed, had a bath. About 6pm a woman from the Workshop came round with 2 blank time sheets for the last 2 weeks that I hadn't filled in. Obviously not - it was the holidays. So tomorrow I'll have to go there. While I'm there I'll tell the green suit bloke to look for a new placement for me, as on Monday I'll be telling the woman I won't be doing any more evenings. They make me unhealthily anxious.

I can always bargain with the others to stay till 4.30 or 5pm so they only have to do 4½ or 4 hours in the evenings. But if she doesn't like it she can lump it. This placement has not been up to scratch.

Day 272

Cashed my Giro. Did some programming: worked on a variation of that old ZX81 program 'Tangrace' where objects move in circles (you alter their co-ordinates with COS and SIN).

Carried on with Philanthropists. Took down the Christmas decorations.

Day 271

More C progress.

Day 270

Prompted by an unusually interesting article in the Business Independent on Sunday about the Uranus/Neptune conjunction this year, looked it up in the library: it occurs 3 times, at 19° 34' Capricorn in February, 18° 48' Capricorn in August and 18° 32' Capricorn in October. All in the 4th house (the Opposition) of the U.K. chart and exactly opposite the U.K.'s Moon in 19° 29' Cancer. Very interesting.

More C successes after tea.

Day 269

Did some C, read the paper. In the evening started The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists again.

Day 268

In the afternoon Carl came round and we went down town in the fog. Came back, did a bit of programming after he'd gone.

Day 267

Started my boycott of Carlton TV (Thatchervision).

Day 266

To the Green Man for New Year's Eve. Home at 12.50.

So: pontification about 1992. A year in which I became better friends with M and J. It's not been a bad year. Let's hope 1993 can be even better. I'll tell you one thing about 1993: it'll be another nail in the coffin of the Tories. I'll see them damned yet. Come on you Reds!